Best still photo settings

Not A Speck Of Cereal · Jun 1, 2019

Bob4131 said:
realize Lightroom can make it artistic but I am trying to stay with realistic

Without doing any real Photoshop work, just loading it into PS (which brings it into the Camera Raw filter) and hitting the new AUTO link (which is the Lightroom Develop module too) really brightens the shot up (while still being realistic).

Your posted DNG is HDR merged, but it's drab with all medium tones, little contrast. It's less than realistic. The advantage of HDR (for those of us that strive not to over-do it) is to present an image that represents reality in a way that the camera cannot capture.

If you capture a wide-dynamic range scene with bracketing and then merge them to HDR, you're not realizing the full potential if you do not then EXPAND the tonal ranges in the image.

You can use the AUTO button, or you can fine tune to your own taste with the sliders (or AUTO followed by fine-tuning), or you can go a log farther with curves, layers, and other wonderful post-processing techniques.

Chris

Bob4131 · Jun 1, 2019

brettbrandon said:
That is a great work around, I will have to try that.

I have this same problem in the smoky mountains. When it is overcast like this there is a ton of scattered light reflecting off the humidity in the air and kind of has the effect of a fogged lens which gets worse with distance. The same shot on a sunny day would be much different.
For something long distance like this I would have used about F4.5. I'm not sure if you are aware but the posted pic is not full resolution at 3979 x 2982 pixels. Not sure if you did that for posting or if you are shooting that way.
Personally for this I would have my polarizer on set at 12 o'clock position to help remove some of the scattered light.

In photography there is no "correct" way in my opinion. What ever works for what you are trying to accomplish is the "best" way. Experiment and try new things like your work around for the weak bracketing...

Heres my quick go at the pic...
View attachment 74137

Your post process is a little brighter and sharper than mine. Can you tell me what modes you did? Thanks

Bob4131 · Jun 1, 2019

Not A Speck Of Cereal said:
Without doing any real Photoshop work, just loading it into PS (which brings it into the Camera Raw filter) and hitting the new AUTO link (which is the Lightroom Develop module too) really brightens the shot up (while still being realistic).

Your posted DNG is HDR merged, but it's drab with all medium tones, little contrast. It's less than realistic. The advantage of HDR (for those of us that strive not to over-do it) is to present an image that represents reality in a way that the camera cannot capture.

If you capture a wide-dynamic range scene with bracketing and then merge them to HDR, you're not realizing the full potential if you do not then EXPAND the tonal ranges in the image.

You can use the AUTO button, or you can fine tune to your own taste with the sliders (or AUTO followed by fine-tuning), or you can go a log farther with curves, layers, and other wonderful post-processing techniques.

Chris

I took the photo in LR and hit auto in the Tone section. Comparing to what I did manually, it lowered exposure, pushed shadows / whites by ~20% more than I had done. It also reduced (made more negative) highlights / blacks a little more than I had done. For example highlights went from -70 to -84. See my jpeg a few posts back.

So I had expanded the tonal range but not to the degree auto did. I didn't like that it reduced exposure (I pushed it to +1 while auto only pushed to +0.5). I guess your point is to play with the tonal section to get what you like. Thanks for the explanation, understanding the background is helpful rather than just randomly pushing sliders. Thanks!

brettbrandon · Jun 1, 2019

Bob4131 said:
Your post process is a little brighter and sharper than mine. Can you tell me what modes you did? Thanks

Getting clarity out of overcast haze I use slightly more drastic measures you might say.
Heres three screenshots showing what I did. Sorry for the large size, I am on a 4k monitor.
The first shows all the overall settings.
The second shows the gradient filter mask (a post version of a gradient ND filter with bells and whistles) with the settings showing at the top.
The third shows the radial filters. The two on the sky have exposure and saturation adjustments. All the rest are just exposure adjustments.

You could then from here use the Adjustment Brush to add more drastic highlighting and shadowing. I did not do that.

This is Lightroom 6. I quit the subscription crap and went back to my old dvd version....

runeOfRune · Jun 1, 2019

General advice: most of the time, you will have to use photoshop to fix things. This isn't studio photography, you can't control everything. Hey look, a cloud! Well, have fun fiddling with exposure from scratch.

So, shoot multiple takes with different settings. Use exposure bracketing. Then compose the final shot from what you got.

"But it's fake!!1"

Entirety of photography is fake. But sometimes, you just get lucky.

brettbrandon · Jun 1, 2019

For those of you who don't want to tinker but still get good results from raw files, I have heard some good feedback about AirMagic. It also works as a plugin in PS and LR. I am not affiliated with them.

Be the first one to try AirMagic, the world’s first fully automated Drone Photos Enhancer.

EDIT:
Just downloaded the trial and ran your pic through it. This is with the effect set at 100% and it looks like the trial only outputs to a small size.

Bob4131 · Jun 1, 2019

brettbrandon said:
Getting clarity out of overcast haze I use slightly more drastic measures you might say.
Heres three screenshots showing what I did. Sorry for the large size, I am on a 4k monitor.
The first shows all the overall settings.
The second shows the gradient filter mask (a post version of a gradient ND filter with bells and whistles) with the settings showing at the top.
The third shows the radial filters. The two on the sky have exposure and saturation adjustments. All the rest are just exposure adjustments.

You could then from here use the Adjustment Brush to add more drastic highlighting and shadowing. I did not do that.

View attachment 74248

View attachment 74249

View attachment 74250

This is Lightroom 6. I quit the subscription crap and went back to my old dvd version....

Thank you very much, this is exactly the feedback I was looking for! I am still learning to use Lightroom. My journey from just taking jpegs has been very incremental of identifying the most obvious flaw and then learning how to fix it. Probably could have learned faster if I took a class but it is just a hobby. ? Thanks again!

Bob4131 · Jun 1, 2019

brettbrandon said:
For those of you who don't want to tinker but still get good results from raw files, I have heard some good feedback about AirMagic. It also works as a plugin in PS and LR. I am not affiliated with them.

Be the first one to try AirMagic, the world’s first fully automated Drone Photos Enhancer.

EDIT:
Just downloaded the trial and ran your pic through it. This is with the effect set at 100% and it looks like the trial only outputs to a small size.

View attachment 74252

The video in the ad seems to promise alot. I will have to try it. $40 might be worth it even just to get a better starting point. I spend alot of time playing with color balance when I have no grey to use the eye dropper tool, but I have not been happy with the auto color balance tool.
I wonder if this is more than crank up dehaze and then auto color balance and auto on tone?
I cann't believe it does the radial filtering like you did manually .....Thanks

brettbrandon · Jun 1, 2019

Bob4131 said:
I spend alot of time playing with color balance when I have no grey to use the eye dropper tool, but I have not been happy with the auto color balance tool.

Heres a method I found that gets the white ballance very close to, or right on depending on the color content of the shot.
Try loading up the shot you posted above and set the settings I posted. Dont worry about the filters, just the main settings should do.
Now take a look at the very right side of the Histogram. You see the grey area with all the colors behind it and they all pretty much line up together along the right edge. Slowly move the Temp slider to the right and you will notice the yellow and reds pulling away from the grey edge and the blues moving left. Now move the slider to the left and observe the blues pulling away to the right of the grey area edge. I move it back and forth until all the colors line up with the gray area edge.
It also works for the tint setting using green and magenta to be centered on the grey edge.
That is something I figured out myself and dont know that it is taught anywhere.

A couple more cool pointers.
When setting the sharpness, you always want to set the "Masking" to sharpen only what you want.
If you hold down the ALT key (on a pc) while you move the slider, the picture will change to show you what is being affected by the sharpening. The farther to the right, the larger the lines it sharpens. I generally slide the slider to the right until none of the sky is being sharpened. That helps reduce enhancing the noise in the sky. The edges of clouds are ok...

I usually set my White and Black levels after making the other adjustments. If you hold down the ALT key while adjusting those, the screen goes white and just shows the areas that are clipped. I found this very cool.

As far as going to class to learn Lightroom, all you need is on youtube for free...
When I first got it I found a couple of videos that worked on a shot and explained what each control did and why you would use it. I learned most of what I know about Lightroom from those and experimentation.

brettbrandon · Jun 1, 2019

I found the video that taught me quite a bit about Lightroom when I first got it in one viewing...

Bob4131 · Jun 2, 2019

brettbrandon said:
Heres a method I found that gets the white ballance very close to, or right on depending on the color content of the shot.
Try loading up the shot you posted above and set the settings I posted. Dont worry about the filters, just the main settings should do.
Now take a look at the very right side of the Histogram. You see the grey area with all the colors behind it and they all pretty much line up together along the right edge. Slowly move the Temp slider to the right and you will notice the yellow and reds pulling away from the grey edge and the blues moving left. Now move the slider to the left and observe the blues pulling away to the right of the grey area edge. I move it back and forth until all the colors line up with the gray area edge.
It also works for the tint setting using green and magenta to be centered on the grey edge.
That is something I figured out myself and dont know that it is taught anywhere.

A couple more cool pointers.
When setting the sharpness, you always want to set the "Masking" to sharpen only what you want.
If you hold down the ALT key (on a pc) while you move the slider, the picture will change to show you what is being affected by the sharpening. The farther to the right, the larger the lines it sharpens. I generally slide the slider to the right until none of the sky is being sharpened. That helps reduce enhancing the noise in the sky. The edges of clouds are ok...

I usually set my White and Black levels after making the other adjustments. If you hold down the ALT key while adjusting those, the screen goes white and just shows the areas that are clipped. I found this very cool.

As far as going to class to learn Lightroom, all you need is on youtube for free...
When I first got it I found a couple of videos that worked on a shot and explained what each control did and why you would use it. I learned most of what I know about Lightroom from those and experimentation.

Thanks, I will try these. I will check the specific YouTube you mentioned but many are kinda a waste of time, they either are too simple or complex for where I am today. Plus I am not a big video fan, I rather read instructions than watch a video. ?

brettbrandon · Jun 2, 2019

Bob4131 said:
Thanks, I will try these. I will check the specific YouTube you mentioned but many are kinda a waste of time, they either are too simple or complex for where I am today. Plus I am not a big video fan, I rather read instructions than watch a video. ?

I hear ya, I don't watch videos either or am I a TV person. I've never bought a TV in my life...

I only watched two vids on Lightroom with the above being the first. Watched another one after that and realized the first one showed me all I was looking for. Its about 45 mins and the guy does drag on a bit sometimes but there is alot of great info in one sitting. If you only watch one vid I would suggest it. If you dont, I surely understand that as well.

Fly safe and take lots of pics....

kilomikebravo · Jun 3, 2019

brettbrandon said:
I've never bought a TV in my life...

Brett: All I can think of to say is...

WOW!

Without question, you are the ONLY person I've ever heard of that has never purchased a television. Truly amazing, dude.